Startup Grind is the world's largest startup community designed to educate, inspire, and connect entrepreneurs.
Every year Startup Grind hosts SG Women’s Month, proudly recognising the accomplishments of female leaders around the world. Throughout the month of May, we’re hosting local and global events with the goal of bringing together female entrepreneurs and investors who are leading, shaping, and funding the future – female first.
We hope you’ll join us during our ninth year to celebrate the power of #SGWomen on social media and through Startup Grind events happening all over the world.
The annual SG Women's Summit in London is back on May 24th, 2022 at 6 PM BST at the IDEALondon in the heart of East London. We've lined up 2 hours of invaluable advice and lessons learned from top female VCs, founders, and educators as well as networking with fellow female founders from your community.
Last year we hosted speakers from Google for Startups, 23 and me, The Wall Street Journal, to name a few. Stay tuned as we announce the full lineup of speakers and session details this week...
We are very happy to announce all female panel including Jo Parker from Solivus, Victoria Armstrong from Cogo, Anna Buldakova from Vektor AI, and Catherine McQueen from Beinn Capital.
Legal and business support for startups, founders and investors. At our next event, members of Lewis Silkin's team will be available to discuss some of your burning legal advice on everything from data protection, IP and innovations, through to fundraising, managing people, and getting your customer and supplier contracts right on a one on one basis. Book your slot here: https://forms.gle/ZFbmPVE5sApetbeK8
Join us, learn from our speakers and come celebrate female entrepreneurship with us.
Lewis Silkin
Strategy Lead
Francesca Ainsworth is strategy lead for Lewis Silkin’s network for decision makers of luxury, lifestyle and premium brand businesses – The Collective by Lewis Silkin. She also advises clients on the full spectrum of corporate issues across a broad range of sectors, but specialise in the creative industries (with a particular interest in luxury, digital, publishing and advertising).
Francesca sits on Lewis Silkin’s D&I board, and is also a member of BLOOM, a network to provide professional support and empower women within the communications industry.
23andMe
Co-founder/CEO
Shirley Foundation
Entrepreneur, Philanthropist
Blossom Capital
Managing Partner
Dame Stephanie Shirley is a highly successful entrepreneur turned ardent philanthropist.
Having arrived in Britain as an unaccompanied child refugee in 1939, she started what became Xansa on her dining room table with £6 in 1962. In 25 years as its Chief Executive she developed it into a leading business technology group, pioneering new work practices and changing the position of professional women (especially in hi-tech) along the way. In 2007 it was acquired by Steria, having now grown to be a public company with revenues of over £370 million.
Since retiring in 1993, she has served on corporate Boards such as Tandem Computers Inc. (1992-7), the John Lewis Partnership plc (1999-2001) and the European Advisory Board of Korn/Ferry International (2001-4). But her focus has been increasingly on philanthropy based on her strong belief in business people giving something back to society. Her main interests are autism (her autistic son Giles died age 35 in 1998) and making better use of IT in the voluntary sector. She is also much in demand as a keynote speaker at international conferences.
Her charitable Shirley Foundation is now one of the top 50 grant-giving foundations in the UK with well over £50m grants given. It has initiated and funded a number of projects that are pioneering by nature, strategic in impact and significant in money terms. Current activity is focussed on Autistica in the UK and internationally, dedicated to fund research into the causes of autism and hence halve the global cost of the disorder by 2020. Dame Stephanie was also a major donor to the Oxford Internet Institute.
Xansa was acquired by Steria in 2007, Steve served on Steria's CSR Advisory Board in 2008/9. She was appointed by the UK government to serve as the national Ambassador for Philanthropy in 2009/10.
Dame Stephanie Shirley published her deeply inspiring memoir, Let IT Go, which charts her life from her time as a child in Germany and arrival in England as an unaccompanied Kindertransport refugee through to her retirement and dedication to charity. It is an amazing read which will take you through the entire range of emotions - from happiness at the success of her original company Freelance Programmers through to the ultimate sadness of losing her only child.
Copies of the book will be available on the day for a £10 donation.
Ophelia is a passionate technology investor and venture capitalist. In 2018 she co-founded Blossom Capital with a mission to bring a highly differentiated approach to early stage venture capital. Blossom's mission is to supercharge the most visionary founders in Europe, enabling them to build companies which compete on a global scale.
As a General Partner at LocalGlobe, she helped build their first institutional fund and invested in a number of exciting companies including Beamery, Cuvva, Debut, Echo, Tessian and Zego.
In 2016, with the mission to improve the ratio of women in senior roles in technology startups, Ophelia founded ALT "Ambitious Ladies in Tech" - a mentor programme that matches junior women in technology start-ups with senior functional leaders to provide them with valuable coaching, skills development and networking. The network now counts over 65 mentees and 130 mentors, including executives from some of the world's leading tech companies. Learn more here https://ambitiousladiesin.tech/
Previously, Ophelia was with Index Ventures for four years where she led investments in Big Health, Call9, MarvelApp, Osper and Typeform and worked closely with Credit Benchmark, Peoplevox and Robinhood.
Ophelia was named by Forbes magazine as a rising star in its inaugural Europe 30 Under 30.
Solivus.com
CEO
Cogo
Strategic Advisor
Vektor AI
CEO
Jo Parker-Swift founded Solivus in 2016. Solivus is creating game changing energy solutions with world class engineers and collaborating with dynamic organisations. The new patent pending Solivus Arc and the innovative Solivus car port will be launched in 2021. Both products take advantage of the special properties of new thin-film solar, generating a more uniform energy profile over the course of a day rather than a spike at midday.
As well as developing and selling the new curved solar technology Jo is leading Solivus to distribute thin-film solar technologies for installations on large buildings that are currently unable to take the weight of conventional solar.
Jo successfully founded two previous companies; 360 Clinical, a technology company that was acquired by a ftse 250 company and MIAD, a management training company that was sold with full earn out achieved.
Initially after obtaining a good science degree Jo worked for global pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca in sales and business development before spotting a niche in the market and founding her first company.
A versatile COO and passionate leader of people with international experience in rapidly growing start-ups; Biotech / Mental health / SaaS companies.
Blends an entrepreneurial multi business/model background with 13+ years COO/Director experience in technology. Demonstrates a strong bias for problem solving, action and accountability, underpinned by a love of engaging people at all levels.
Enjoys the challenge of start-up and scaling technology companies, leading people as they execute on bold visions, and collaborative environments that never stand still. Where every team player is there to make things happen while being agile and adapting to problems and issues as they arise.
Trained in Health science before working in enterprise sales, Victoria then founded/co-founded four companies, with one recently being acquired out of the US. Holding multiple board and advisory positions in various tech businesses, Victoria immensely enjoys mentoring too.
When not working, she can often be found on a bike with her family in the beautiful English countryside, at the gym, or head deep in a science-fiction book.
Anna Buldakova is a co-founder and CEO of Vektor AI, a platform that helps people find mentors.
Previously she was a Product Management Lead at Facebook, and a Product Manager at Intercom, Yandex and various startups. Anna is also a product advisor for companies developing AI products and a speaker on the topics of Future of Work and AI.
Beinn Capital
CEO
Catherine has an MBA in finance and trained as a lawyer. She formerly worked as a fashion model travelling the world shooting for the likes of Dior, Shiseido, Levis, Ultimo, Elle, Marie-Claire and Tatler. She then worked as a producer and reporter for numerous channels including ESPN, BSKYB, Al Jazeera, the BBC and Channel 4. She is a published writer and journalist, worked as a DJ at events and launches from Hong Kong to Miami, Fashion Week to the Super Bowl. She has sung on several dance tracks, charting in the Billboard Top 20. A mother of one she currently runs a real estate company, Beinn Capital Ltd, continues to work in TV and write.
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